By refusing to engage in the vulgarities of such systemic violence, particularly in our own churches, we forget our executed God, and his complete identification with those who suffer. It is about time that we get vulgar in precisely the ways our theological traditions lend themselves to. If we do not, we too are responsible for watering those trees that bear ‘strange fruit.’

In the sixth episode of the Symposium Ethics Podcast, host Jermaine McDonald speaks with Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas about her latest book, “Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God,” on the one-year anniversaries of a St. Louis County grand jury’s decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the three-second shooting of Tamir Rice by police officers on a playground in Cleveland, Ohio.